Implementing a strategy pattern

It is often the case that runtime conditions force the developer to define several ways of doing the same thing. Traditionally, this involved a massive if/elseif/else block of commands. You would then either have to define large blocks of logic inside the if statement, or create a series of functions or methods to enable the different approaches. The strategy pattern attempts to formalize this process by having the primary class encapsulate a series of sub-classes that represent different approaches to solve the same problem.

How to do it...

1. In this illustration, we will use the GetSet hydrator class defined previously as a strategy. We will define a primary Application\Generic\Hydrator\Any class, which will then consume strategy classes in the Application\Generic\Hydrator\Strategy namespace, including GetSet, PublicProps, and Extending.

2. We first define class constants that reflect the built-in strategies that are available:

   namespace Application\Generic\Hydrator...